Why AirSwap (AST) is the best ICO of October (whitelist registration starts TOMORROW, public sale on Oct 10)
I love when the media covers crypto stories, so imagine my surprise when I saw a CNBC interview and article about a specific ICO: AirSwap (AST). AirSwap is a protocol that facilitates the decentralized peer-to-peer trading of ethereum-based tokens.
I’ve never seen ANY ICO get real coverage on CNBC before, so I looked up the full interview (https://youtu.be/7P_Ri28DgkU?t=307). I was curious because the interviewer mentioned around the 5:15 mark that the co-founder of Ethereum was advising AirSwap, and I know Vitalik has stated that he’s not advising any ICOs after Kyber. It turns out that the interviewer was referring to Joe Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum and is the CEO of ConsenSys.
The hype
This project has a lot of hype besides the CNBC coverage. Bloomberg wrote a long piece on AirSwap and mentioned how the co-founder of AirSwap, Michael Oved, was a partner at Virtu, a high frequency trading firm. “Virtu gained fame for only losing money on a single day from 2009 to 2014 as it matched buyers and sellers in stocks, bonds, futures and currencies.” (?!)
AirSwap also was mentioned in a coindesk article. https://www.coindesk.com/former-virtu-trader-plans-cryptocurrency-exchange-overhaul/
The team/advisors
- The team is stacked. https://www.airswap.io/team/
- It’s backed by ConsenSys.
- The advisors range from Joe Lubin to Bill Tai (lead investor in BitFury) to Clifford Hart (the former US ambassador to Hong Kong). AirSwap seems to be positioning itself to get exchange listings in Hong Kong (Binance) and Korea. That would be huge.
Valuation
The sale (including pre-sale) is for 150K ETH. Which I didn’t like because tbh it’s a lot. But it’s still a SOLID hit.
At $300/ETH, that’s a $45 million floating market cap. The 150K ETH represents 30% of all AST issued, with the rest subject to vesting/lockups for at least 6 months.
Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are one of my favorite categories of ICOs because the returns are so juicy. I’ve been keeping a list.
- WAVES. ICO: 0.00033-.00037 BTC. Current: 0.00128 BTC (3.5–3.9x)
- Omisego. ICO: 0.001 ETH. Current: 0.0343 ETH (~34x)
- Kyber. ICO: 0.00167 ETH. Current: 0.00644 ETH (~4x)
- ZRX. ICO: 0.000167 ETH. Current: 0.00067 ETH (~4x)
A conservative estimate for the valuation of AST is at least 2.5x over the ICO price. That would give AST a floating market cap of $112.5 mil. Compared to:
- WAVES: $490 million
- OMG: $912 million
- Kyber: $264 million
- ZRX: $101 million
The likely range for AST is 2.5–5x ICO price (or more depending on exchange listings and other news).
Exchanges and trading date
https://blog.airswap.io/airswap-token-ast-launching-october-10-7fec2d4dcf7b
AST will also be quickly tradable — one week after the completion of the public sale.
DEXs are also classified as utility tokens, so AST should have an easy time getting listed because it’s not a security. Two recent DEXs are both on big exchanges — ZRX is on Polo and Kyber is on Binance.
Because AST is a utility token, KYC is a snap. The only people banned from participating are the Chinese.
Market conditions upon launch
One critical fact that people may overlook is that ICOs are dependent on market conditions when they launch.
The AST public sale is on Oct 10, and AST becomes tradable a week after completion of the sale (probably Oct 17).
October should be a great month for ETH. The Metropolis hard fork happens on Oct 17. DevCon3 is from Nov 1–4. And the China FUD is finally over, and we’re poised to MOON.
Resources
I’m psyched about this project. I’ll be registering for the whitelist tomorrow.
Whitelist registration: https://media.consensys.net/airswap-whitelist-registration-5f761659aa25
Details on how to register will be released on the AirSwap telegram: https://t.me/airswapofficial
Details on the use of the AST token: https://media.consensys.net/the-airswap-token-42855fe5e120
How AST is different from other DEX, including Kyber and ZRX: https://blog.airswap.io/the-lay-of-the-land-in-decentralized-exchange-protocols-55ed00feb3df
Hope you enjoyed reading this! I appreciate your donations xo 0x8Ff7E8F48eE3AD6F1cE11d756C44cedf2aea4d79
